Stories about the suburbs often focus on conservatism. But, as Lily Geismer shows in her fascinating book, called Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberalism and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton University Press, 2014) suburbs can also be liberal spaces. The high-tech corridor of the Route 128 highway that circles Boston...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Democrats need to stop their “monomania” over Donald Trump and reconnect with their party’s core ideals to reclaim political power, argues Thomas B. Reston in his book Soul of a Democrat: The Seven Core Ideals That Made Our Party and Our Country Great (All Points Books, 2018). He explores those ideals...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Investigative journalist and Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center, David Neiwert has been covering the radical right-wing for decades. In Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump (Verso, 2017), Neiwert takes his years of experience to chronicle the rise of what is now known...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris counsels Democrats to disregard procedural precedents and niceties, and pugnaciously wield power in his book, It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics (Melville House, 2018). As Faris explains in this interview, he doesn’t mean Democrats should...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

To find out what Americans really think about their government, University of Texas-Austin Professor Roderick P. Hart read and analyzed approximately 10,000 letters to the editor, from 12 “ordinary” cities, written between 1948 and the present. In Civic Hope: How Ordinary Americans Keep Democracy Alive (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Hart...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

For all the American media coverage of President Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia, what’s rarely heard are the voices of Russians themselves. Russians on Trump: Coverage and Commentary (East View Press, 2018), edited by Laurence Bogoslaw, surveys the range of opinions about Trump that have appeared in the Russian...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

During the 2016, journalist Salena Zito, who is based in Western Pennsylvania, sensed a brewing conservative populist in the white working-class when many thought the election would be determined by other demographic groups. Her dispatches from the back roads proved prescient when Donald Trump won the presidency. She teamed up...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

CNN commentator Amanda Carpenter was an early conservative critic of Donald Trump when she was targeted in a smear campaign falsely accusing her of an extramarital affair with Trump’s 2016 Republican primary rival Sen. Ted Cruz. In her words, she was “gaslit,” driven crazy by bald-faced lies. In Gaslighting America:...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Those looking for deeper understanding of why the socially conservative, evangelical Christian community has been so loyal of Donald Trump will find answers in the book God and Donald Trump (Frontline, 2017). Author Stephen Strang provides an insider’s perspective on how evangelical leaders who initially backed Sen. Ted Cruz for Senate...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

Today we are joined by Jesse Berrett, author of Pigskin Nation: How the NFL Remade American Politics (University of Illinois Press, 2018). Berrett is a high school history teacher at University High School in San Francisco. He earned a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley, and has...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics